Vegetables

How much does it cost (in £, hours, m2, kg of co2 or units of biodiversity) to produce a crop, and how much can i sell it for? How can I grow more for less? I suppose it is also important to ask how I can sell less for more?

At least in my experience as a vegetable farmer, there seem two particularly prominent gaps in data to answering this massive, multifaceted question. 1. The urgent one: How many hours does it take to grow a vegetable?

A lot of organic vegetable farmers earn very little for the amount of work they do, yet still, our earnings or wages often make up a high proportion of our turnover. Despite this, data on the labor cost of crop production is extremely thin. Also, what affect the labor costs of production, knowledge and experience? Capital investment? What is the breakdown between fixed and variable labor costs of production, and what are the implications for what constitutes a viable scale? How do the answers to these questions vary from one production system to another? This question is the important one, because it has a strong bearing on whether or not we stay in business, and how we grow as an industry.

2. The important one: How much does it cost the planet to grow a vegetable?

This question gets at what gives us our sense of purpose in this line of work. How do we even start to measure this as a farming community? What are the key metrics? Gross carbon balance? Soil microbial count? Insect population? We can observe these things on our farms, but unless we can measure them, we cant share data to effectively support each other to learn from our experiences. However we develop a way to measure this, it needs to be cheap, quick, objective, and representative of what we care about.

Organizing some information by sector and crop seems an obvious way to start, then creating additional branches for content that does not fit into this structure.

data
deleted table

Yield
I believe that the land area's that these yields relate to include wheelings/footpaths between beds, and headlands where appropriate, though I am not sure about this, particularly for the NFCA data. I would suggest we adopt this as standard practice, as it is a key benefit of manual systems and smaller equipment.

AMOS refers to the LWA report, A Matter of Scale. OFMH refers to the Organic Farm Management Handbook produced by Elm Farm. NFCA refers to the Network For Climate Action.

Sales Prices
The government compiles weekly average wholesale prices of certain UK produced fruit and vegetables, although these aren’t organic. You can access historical data from this webpage:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/wholesale-fruit-and-vegetable-prices-weekly-average

We have summarized that data here:

The Soil Association produces weekly horticulture produce prices (wholesale and retail):    soilassociation.org/farmers-growers/market-information/price-data/horticultural-produce-price-data/ Growers also refer to prices set by the larger box schemes, such as    Riverford Organic Farmers, or set by local producers.

Crop Planning
Rotations

This table will give you an indication of when you can plant and harvest what crops in the uk climate. It has been produced for an average year in wales not too high above sea level, so if you are either significantly further north or south, or in a particular microclimate, adjust your expectaions accordingly.

Welsh Crop Sowing Table. 1 represents outdoor sowing, 2 represents sowing in, or for a protected environment.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cRtybqpaX6WIl1F6t6uCAu5oJN2yTOuyGi9DGVR2ZRs/edit?usp=sharing

We have developed this tool to plan production for a box scheme or similar.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ltpMaMTBkr6wvDE3RfOgBdgRkLK-VpaGfXO5Cd2i5go/edit?usp=sharing

Sowing schedule for The Community Farm Bristol (2011):

https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/resource/the-community-farm-planting-schedule/

Cropping plan for Loxley Valley Farm (2010):

https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Loxley-Valley-Community-Farm-Crop-Plan.xlsx

The Soil Association has developed a free Excel spreadsheet which projects quantities (kilos) needed annually and corresponding planting area based on weekly demand. The spreadsheet comes with standard yields for fifteen vegetables, but the spreadsheet can be edited to include other produce:

https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSA-cropping-tool-2020.xlsx

Annual Incomes
For your business plan you’ll want a lot more detailed financial information than just a total projected annual income, but it is still helpful to have an idea of the range of net incomes being generated in your sector. Fortunately, the Landworkers Alliance (LWA), the Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC) and Moss Brook Growers between them have reviewed the net incomes of over 60 UK-based small-scale ecological producers, primarily small-scale fruit and vegetable growers.

Production Case Studies A Matter of Scale Moss Brook Growers Venture Forth Small is Successful

The Organic Centre Wales has provided example figures for the impact on whole farm profitability for introducing field-scale vegetables into an existing livestock system within a larger farm setting. Though these prices are over 10 years old, the relative change in income should give some sense of the likely impact of introducing horticulture to a livestock holding

https://organiccentrewales.org.uk/uploads/hortguide_eng.pdf

Start-Up Costs
The LWA interviewed three fruit and vegetable producers on their start-up costs which are set out in detail in the publication New Entrant Example Start-Up Costs.

Moss Brook Growers, producing field-scale vegetables on 21-acres, have shared their business information, including investments in machinery, buildings and equipment:

https://sustainweb.org/secure/MossBrookGrowers.pdf Gardening for Profit, published by Green Books guides the reader through the process of securing land and setting-up a small-scale vegetable business and includes figures for start-up equipment for a 2-acre market garden. Available to download for £6.99:

https://greenbooks.co.uk/Book/465/Gardening-for-Profit.html. Mark Measures and Iain Tolhurst of the ORC produced example business plans for the ELC for three horticultural businesses on plots between 3-9 acres, including start-up costs for protected and field    crops (appendices 2-4):

ecologicalland.coop/sites/default/files/ELC%20-%20Arlington%203%20Business%20Plans%20with%20supporting%20information%20-%20full%20document.pdf In Table 4 we’ve provided a list of suppliers to check latest prices for equipment and tools, new and second-hand.

The LWA, Centre for Alternative Land Use (CALU) and the CSA Network have provided or provide data on the yields that are being achieved for individual fruit and vegetable crops.

A Matter of Scale (2017), provides yields data for 22 fruit and vegetable crops. The farms surveyed for this publication include those making use of intercropping, polyculture and agroforestry. The CSA Network (2020) provides yields for 19 vegetable crops within its Horticultural Cropping Tool:    communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSA-cropping-tool-2020.xlsx The network for climate action provide this as a home gardeners perspective on yields for over 50 horticultural crops: http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/positive_alternatives/food_and_farming/grow_your_own_food.pdf CALU Technical Notes (2005) include factsheets on over 30 non-organic fruit and vegetable crops which include yields: http://www.calu.bangor.ac.uk/technotes.php.en

Financial Costs
We’ve compiled a list of suppliers to establish up-to-date costs for: seed, plug plants, crop covers, etc.

Labour Costs
The AMOS Report (2017) (section 7.1) provides data on labour per hectare from nearly 60 small-scale fruit and vegetable producers.

If you are an existing farm with decent records of the fixed and marginal labour costs of production, you may be able to project the increase in labor that a particular increase in production will entail. If you are developing a business plan for a startup, you will need to find operations that are doing what you want to do and ask for their data. Remember that productivity is highly variable, dependent on infrastructure and equipment, skill, experience, land quality, farm layout, weather and climate, proximity to market, and a host of other contingencies. If you seek to pay, or pay yourself minimum wage, labour could be anywhere from 50% to 90% of the operational costs of production in organic horticulture. Getting a handle on the labour costs of production is a key challenge to our sector and is something we are seeking to address.

Projecting Quantities Needed
The Soil Association has developed a free Excel spreadsheet which projects quantities (kilos) needed annually and corresponding planting area based on weekly demand. The spreadsheet comes with standard yields for fifteen vegetables, but the spreadsheet can be edited to include other produce:    communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSA-cropping-tool-2020.xlsx Jonathan Hughes has produced this veg box planning tool https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ltpMaMTBkr6wvDE3RfOgBdgRkLK-VpaGfXO5Cd2i5go/edit?usp=sharing

Crop Data Management
Veggie-Compass (USA) is a very detailed free tool designed to calculate crop costs and margins in detail, including by sales outlet (e.g. farmers’ market, wholesale, etc.). The tool takes you through all of the possible costs which otherwise may be hidden and allocates labour and overheads proportionally to each crop. The website includes helpful video tutorials: ssawg.org/gfp-veggie-compass/. The ORC (UK) has prepared a similar (and also free) tool to calculate individual crop costs and margins, although without supporting video tutorials:    organicresearchcentre.com/manage/authincludes/article_uploads/project_outputs/Costings_calculator_1_260615.xlsx

Example Business Plans
Mark Measures and Iain Tolhurst of the ORC produced examples plans (2017) for the ELC for three horticultural businesses on plots between 3-9 acres:

https://ecologicalland.coop/sites/default/files/ELC%20-%20Arlington%203%20Business%20Plans%20with%20supporting%20information%20-%20full%20document.pdf Moss Brook Growers, a vegetable business on 21-acres of Grade 2 land in Lancashire has shared their business plan and Excel files (2011):

https://sustainweb.org/pdf/MLFW_MossBrook_Appendices.zip Sutton Community Farm produced a 5-year business plan (2017) for their 7-acre community farm providing veg boxes, volunteer opportunities, school visits, workshops and tours:

https://suttoncommunityfarm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/SCF-Business-Plan-2017-22_Feb17.pdf Community Farm Bristol produced a 5-year business plan (2013) for their 28-acre community farm providing veg boxes, wholesale veg, education and volunteer opportunities:

https://thecommunityfarm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/TCF-Strategic-Plan-Final-23092013.pdf